Apr. 4, 2014

Cornell Woolridge of Windsor Mill, Md., takes part in a demonstration outside the Supreme Court in Washington as the court heard arguments on campaign finance. The Supreme Court struck down limits Wednesday in federal law on the overall campaign contributions the biggest individual donors may make to candidates, political parties and political action committees. / (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Written by

Jocelyn Benson

Detroit Free Press guest writer

Jocelyn Benson

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When it comes to choosing and influencing our elected leaders, no principle is more fundamental to our democracy than equality: one person, one vote.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its troubling trend away from protecting that basic democratic principle. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a slim 5-4 majority of justices struck down aggregate limits on how much an individual can donate to federal candidates, political parties and political action committees in a given election cycle. The decision ensures that those who can afford to give hundreds of thousands can give even more. It will amplify the voices and viewpoints of America’s wealthiest citizens while drowning out those of everyone else.

Given the court’s lack of concern for the potential corrupting effect, it’s no wonder many are referring to the McCutcheon decision as “Citizens United II.”

Under federal law, individuals can give no more than $5,200 directly to a candidate for federal office in a given election cycle. In addition, the law placed a limit on the total someone could give collectively to federal candidates over a two-year span to $48,600 — or roughly nine candidates. It is intended to eliminate the ability for one person to exert an undue amount of influence over, say, all those serving on a congressional committee.

McCutcheon’s elimination of that aggregate limit will mean two things. First, it enables the select few who can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a particular election to increase their influence exponentially. Someone can give the maximum donation to every federal candidate running for office in a particular cycle. Only a small number of people in our country have the wealth to enable such massive spending in an election. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that about 600 people in the country hit the aggregate contribution limit during the 2012 election cycle. This decision will amplify their voices alone.

That leads to the second, more pernicious impact of the decision. In previous cases, restrictions on money in politics were found to be constitutional under the First Amendment if those restrictions were in place to stop corruption — or the appearance of corruption — between donors and elected officials. But in McCutcheon, as in Citizens United, the court expressed only a minimal concern that allowing individuals to spend more money to influence federal candidates will lead to corruption.

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“Government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion, “or the political access such support may afford.”

But government works best when public servants truly serve the public, instead of doing the bidding of only those who make the largest campaign contributions. Corruption of that democratic ideal occurs anytime a member of Congress is more likely to choose to return a phone call from or take a meeting with a wealthy campaign donor over an ordinary constituent.

Roberts and four of his colleagues ceased to recognize the real threat that this imbalance of influence poses to our democracy. Instead they issued a ruling that, as Justice Stephen Breyer declared in a scathing dissent, “fails to recognize the difference between influence resting upon public opinion and influence bought by money alone; that overturns key precedent; that creates huge loopholes in the law, and that undermines, perhaps devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.”

Jocelyn Benson is an election law expert, interim dean of Wayne State University Law School and author of “Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.” She was the 2010 Democratic candidate for Michigan secretary of state.